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In the strange, new world of Ontario university men’s basketball, Western will be fighting for one of three playoff spots in a five-team division.

Every other division has four teams with three postseason spots up for grabs.

It reeks of inequity.

“I think our (West) division is at a disadvantage that way,” Mustangs head coach Brad Campbell said of the new format rolled out this week. “We have 17 teams (in Ontario) and it’s a gigantic conference covering a massive amount of territory. Five of the 17 were going to be put in this situation and unfortunately, there’s nothing they (the league’s athletic directors) could really do.

“It probably would’ve been different if (Royal Military College) didn’t leave a few years ago, but some things are going to have to be different and some thinking outside of the box (was needed).”

There were a few options, with North Bay’s Nipissing University set to join the mix this fall.

One was to plop them into the old OUA East Division, creating one nine-team division and leaving the eight-team West in a status quo shape.

Instead, the athletic directors voted on this new-fangled four-division setup, lumping Western in with Windsor, Laurier, Waterloo and Algoma University based in Sault Ste. Marie.

There was one proposal that had Western in one of the four-team divisions, but it was quashed.

“It’ll be interesting to see how this all works out,” Campbell, at his diplomatic best, said. “In these times, you have to try to be progressive and find ways to work and generate some interest and maybe create some new traditions.

“But as a guy who has been around OUA basketball since 1991, it’ll take some getting used to, I think.”

This certainly doesn’t look one bit like the hoops loop old Mustangs stars John Stiefelmeyer and Andy Kwiatkowski used to dominated.

The old home-and-home rivalries with schools like McMaster, Brock and Guelph are kaput.

“We’re going to play (Mac) once from now on, which I guess is kind of disappointing,” Campbell said.

The five-team West division plays a 20-game schedule while the other three have an unbalanced, 19-game regular season.

That renders wins and points in the standings useless. So the first-round playoff matchups will be determined by a sports statistical tool known as RPI (Rating Percentage Index), which puts a lot of stock in strength of schedule.

Coaches find RPI a handy tool when calculating national top 10 rankings — NCAA basketball uses it as a guide in helping create its March Madness brackets. But has Campbell ever heard of a league using it in such an important way as this?

“No,” he said. “I do look at RPI and it’s not a bad indicator of how your team’s doing and we’ll see how that works. Like anything new, there will have to be some trial and error and we’ll revisit that at the end of the season and make adjustments if need be.

“Does that extra game we play in the West help or hurt you in something like RPI? I’m not sure.”

Everything’s a little foggy right now.

Instead of the old way of six schools in each eight-team division making the playoffs, there will be 12 in with zero restrictions on post-season matchups.

“That will be interesting to see what happens,” Campbell said. “It used to be playing in the Ontario West, it was possible the last day of the season could dictate a few different (playoff) opponents, but now, there are all kinds of games that could impact who plays who and you could open against someone from the old OUA East.

“It’s going to create even more chaos for possible playoff situations at the end of the season.”

But for the most part, Campbell will count kilometres and watch The Weather Network each week, rather than calculating RPI.

This new system did not, at least this year, cut down on travel. The Mustangs play two fewer regular-season games than last year and have the same long road trips.

“In our situation, we’re going to have to go up there to all the northern teams this year (Nipissing, Algoma, Laurentian in Sudbury and Lakehead in Thunder Bay),” Campbell said. “We’re at their place this year.”

They will have league powerhouses Ottawa and Carleton at home in February. There’s some concern about that, too.